Shangri-La

Shangri-La

Image by Finborough Theatre

 

Daniel Nelson

 

Shangri-la is a fictional Himalayan paradise that’s also a real place.

 

Places, in fact, because several areas claim to be the spot described in the 1933 novel, Lost Horizon, by British author James Hilton. 

 

Several years ago China decided to cash in on the lure of the name – and it’s potential to generate tourist dollars – by fixing on one spot that would be allowed to use the name.

 

After much rivalry, political shenanigans and corruption, Zhongdian in north-western Yunnan officially renamed itself Shangri-La County. Similarly, Tibet joined Sichuan and Yunnan in a Shangri-La promotion.

 

The manoeuvring testifies to the efficacy of the Shangri-La ideal which new playwright Amy Ng has now seized on and turned into a 75-minute theatrical confrontation about sustainable tourism.

 

Shangri-La is billed as ”the first play to put contemporary Tibet on the UK stage” (clearly, the promoter forgot Tintin in Tibet).

 

It draws on Ng’s own experiences as a consultant to her brother’s sustainable travel company, when she observed Western visitors earnestly looking for enlightenment, as well as mainland Chinese behaving badly.

 

Many of the Westerners craved authenticity, she recalls, “but would have been horrified” if they had really lived in the conditions of the poor “and would have fallen sick immediately.”

 

Ng, however, is also a historian with a research interest in multinational empires, imperial decline, and nationality conflict, and the author of Nationalism and Political Liberty and is too intelligent to make her characters black and white: “All my characters have shades of grey.”

 

They include Bunny, an indigenous woman: “You like your minorities like your pandas – picturesque, cuddly, endangered, helpless. But I refuse to be a panda. I refuse to go extinct. I want to live, to live well, to live like them.”

 

Her liberal Chinese boss looks to a new kind of tourism that's sustainable and enables genuine cultural exchange.

 

Ng’s view seems to be that the sustainable tourism business ”is a kind of subtle corruption”. It’s difficult to do well, she argues, as evidenced by the way national parks can be to the disadvantage of indigenous peoples. The key point is your attitude: “If there’s a lack in yourself, it’s going to go wrong.”

 

* Shangri-La is at the Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, SW10, from 12 July until 6 August. Info: 7244 7439/ admin@finboroughtheatre.co.uk

 

+ 20 July, The Fight for Shangri-La, discussion about the competition between provinces in China to be named Shangri-La, and the effects on the local people, Amy Ng, Michael Sherringham

+ 21 July, Can Tourism Ever Be respectful of Local Cultures?, Amy Ng, Helen Jennings and Peter Bishop, Including screening of Framing The Other hosted by Tourism Concern

+ 22 July, Framing The Other, screening introduced by Helen Jennings

 

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